


intersection

by mismatched (miscalculated)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alpha Jeon Wonwoo, Alpha Lee Chan | Dino, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ambiguous Relationships, Frottage, M/M, Medical Jargon, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Rough Sex, Roughhousing, Violent Thoughts, Voyeurism, semi-graphic depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:41:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29320347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscalculated/pseuds/mismatched
Summary: Presenting as alpha gifted Chan a level of power and control that he’s never had prior. It’s given him what it’s taken from Wonwoo.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi, Jeon Wonwoo/Lee Chan | Dino, Jeon Wonwoo/Lee Chan | Dino/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Jeon Wonwoo/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Lee Chan | Dino/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 109





	intersection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capricornia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/gifts).



> howdy! 
> 
> just a quick disclaimer before you read—i am not attempting to mirror or reflect on real-world social interactions with this or any future omegaverse fics i may write. i have constructed a fictional world where there is a crossover of ‘beast’ (i.e. wolves) and human that is explored/discussed, and that adds many, many elements that exists only in the realm of this fic. i stress heavily on the wolf/human crossover and i would like you to know that this is a made-up (fictional) social interaction that holds no weight in our reality, nor can it parallel our reality. 
> 
> if you have any specific questions or concerns, my CC is in the end-note. 
> 
> with that being said, happy lee chan day and happy ao3 user capricornia (nikki feudaiism wonchanism) day!! i love both of them dearly, and this is my gift to nikki. hope you like this. 
> 
> Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.  
> — _Richard Siken_

Chan pushes his way into Wonwoo’s dark bedroom. He uses his heel to shut the door behind him with a click, expertly dodging the litter of clothes and unassembled figurines on his way to his bed, and the room is left shrouded only in the soft, fluorescent light of Wonwoo’s computer monitor.

“You should’ve come out with us,” he says.

Wonwoo takes a cursory glance up from where he sits at the office chair, curled over his keyboard. His glasses are perched on the tip of his nose, teetering precariously. Bad eyesight soon to get worse. “Eh.”

Chan flops down on the unmade mattress, inhales. _Alpha_. The sheets unequivocally smell like Wonwoo. It’s a nonthreatening scent that still commands attention, thick and heady. Reminds him of the first time they met. Chan’s alpha had registered Wonwoo as competition; time and gentle coaxing allowed for Chan to tame himself.

“You never come,” Chan says. “Why don’t you ever come?”

Wonwoo taps at his keyboard. “Busy.”

“Liar,” Chan rolls onto his side, blinking Wonwoo into sight. Yellow and white plays against the material of Wonwoo’s sleepshirt and messy head of hair. Pretending to be absorbed in some project at three a.m. Chan knows better. “You’re just embarrassed.”

This gets Wonwoo’s attention, if only for a few seconds when their eyes meet. Wonwoo drags his gaze back to his screen. “Of you guys? Sometimes, but not to—”

“Of what you are.”

Immediate silence.

He’d overheard them, once. Wonwoo and Jihoon—at some ungodly hour in the night, because they’re the two notorious night owls of the house—in Jihoon’s room, grumbling about the inefficiency of presenting as anything other than a beta. The hindrance it plays in their lives—in Wonwoo’s career. _Soonyoung doesn’t have to worry about any of this shit_ , he’d heard through the door. _No stupid posturing or getting headaches from pheremones all over the place._

Chan can understand. Somewhat. It _can_ be exhausting, the unspoken rules of how to approach another alpha and when—of where to touch, if you _can_ touch, how to shape your words and use the inflection in your voice to not inadvertently offend or anger. The way you’re often two wrong steps away from filling the air with aggression, snarling, sometimes at the complete mercy of thousands of years of evolution that you can’t even begin to comprehend.

That, sometimes, your body isn’t your own.

It isn’t a lot different from being the youngest. Presenting as alpha gifted Chan a level of power and control that he’s never had prior. It’s given him what it’s taken from Wonwoo.

“You can’t run, y’know,” Chan says. “You’re gonna have to live with it until the day you die.”

Wonwoo’s fingers hesitate over the keyboard. Then they resume typing, Wonwoo’s clipped tone replying, “I know. I’m not embarrassed.”

“You’re upset.”

“I’m annoyed,” Wonwoo says, “that you’re bothering me about this. I need to get this done, so—”

“Alpha.”

Wonwoo hesitates again. This time he doesn’t resume right away. “You’re drunk.”

“Only had one beer, alpha.” He tucks Wonwoo’s pillow under his cheek, scenting. Wants Wonwoo to smell him tonight.

Wonwoo shifts in his seat, chair legs creaking beneath him.

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Why? You’re not an al—?”

“I have this project to finish, so—go, please. I’ll see you in the morning.”

His words and body are at odds. Chan can sense it. Underneath the annoyance and disdain, a thin layer of arousal. Wonwoo likes this.

But, “I’ll stop,” Chan snuffles. He grabs the hem of Wonwoo’s blanket and tugs it over himself. “Can I sleep here?”

Wonwoo considers him. “I have at least two more hours of work to do. The deadline.”

“That’s fine. Can I?”

They stare at one another through the dark. It’s quiet, save for the soft whirring of Wonwoo’s computer; next door, there’s a thumping noise.

“Fine.” Wonwoo turns back to his screen.

He’d heard it called a second puberty years before it happened to him. A wild surge of hormones that his body didn’t know how to properly disperse. Most people assumed he’d be an omega or a beta after he’d stopped growing past 172cm; it’s not that they were holding biases against him—just that there was a pattern that they’d picked up on, only reinforced by their engagement with the media.

Alphas were tall and powerful and rich. Alphas in the movies and the dramas. Alphas in their everyday life. Chan was always the youngest and the shortest, discounted even as he projected his voice and squared his shoulders.

His first puberty had done nothing for him—but the day he presented was the day his age and stature no longer mattered. He didn’t have to pour drinks for anyone other than his parents and grandparents—or older alphas; he didn’t have to accept the scolding from his hyungs at school or at work; he didn’t have to make sure his bow was deeper and longer. Chan spoke and everybody listened.

When Hansol graduated, he told Chan he was going to Seoul. He wanted to be away from his family, figure out what he wanted to do—but he did know that he wanted to work and live near Hongdae. _I have a friend that’s looking for roommates_ , he’d told Chan. _It’s expensive as fuck living on your own._ _Think about it._

Chan had weary ideas of what he’d wanted as a future career (dance choreographer, dance studio manager, vocal teacher, anything centered around dance or song, honestly) and he knew he didn’t want to stay in Iksan his entire life. It only made sense to follow Hansol up north. Maybe create concrete goals with the exposure to Seoul’s glimmer of diamonds, with Hansol’s help.

He was barely of age, freshly an alpha, and living away from his parents for the first time when he moved into a five-bedroom with Hansol, a beta, an omega, and two alphas. Soonyoung, the beta that worked at a club and had gotten Chan a job as a waiter at a Korean BBQ place down the street; Jihoon, a music producer omega that drenched himself in scent blocker 24/7, stayed up at odd hours of the night; Seungcheol and Mingyu, the alphas that worked as musicians (Seungcheol), emcees (Mingyu). A vacant bedroom that they were trying to fill for the sake of sky-high rent prices.

Then, later—Jeon Wonwoo.

There were well-established roles before Chan moved in, and Chan was good at finding his place. He’d reassumed the position as dongsaeng, now that he had to return to the bottom of the hierarchy (Jihoon may have been an omega, but his seniority as second longest-standing member of the pack kept him from having to submit to Chan. Not that Jihoon would ever willingly submit to him, or _anybody_ , Chan quickly learned).

The apartment was silent chaos. Everyone had different jobs, different hours—Soonyoung working overnights sometimes, Mingyu gone for days to weeks chasing his job, Seungcheol picking up gigs in different cities. Jihoon either in his rented studio or locked up in his room, mixing. Hansol grabbing odd jobs through online connections. If Chan wasn’t at the restaurant, he was scouring through listings for vocal or dance teacher openings. Bi-monthly movie nights and odd dinners were their only chances to spend time together as an entire house.

After Chan had settled into his room and an opportunity presented itself, Seungcheol mandated a quick meeting. The six of them—Wonwoo months out from moving in—gathered in the living room. Seungcheol introduced himself as pack leader, seeming almost shy to admit it with the way he fussed at his hair, smiled slowly.

“Feel lucky you get a room to yourself,” Mingyu told him. He was lounging on the couch across from Chan, arm draped close to where Jihoon sat folded up in the corner.“We had people staying with us for a little bit. New to Seoul ‘nd needed a temporary place.”

Soonyoung shot a leg out to tap his toes on Chan’s thigh. “Stay as long as you want, okay? I’m here if you need anything.”

Mediation, Chan assumed. Betas were good at that. “Thank you,” Chan said. That’s what he was—new to Seoul and in need of a temporary home. He’d wondered what made them all choose to stay, to become a pack.

Jihoon initially never said much, addressing Chan as if he’d only just realized he existed everytime they crossed paths. He never took offense, though, since he knew Jihoon thought of him as another temporary straggler. Seungcheol and Jihoon knew one another from their short-lived trainee days; Hansol had become friends with Jihoon through Instagram and occasional meet-ups. That was how he found out about empty rooms a station or two away from Hongdae. Soonyoung and Mingyu were temporarys that became permanent.

He’d just found a role and learned to become good at it—weekly, common space clean-up with Hansol and Soonyoung; monthly kimchi prep and packing in the mini fridge Mingyu bought specifically for that purpose; dropping food off to Seungcheol on the nights he played at a bar near Chan’s job; existential career talks with Jihoon—when Wonwoo rotated through.

And Chan didn’t mean to tease. Not at first. There was a brief moment in time where Chan had even reconsidered whether Wonwoo was an alpha. His scent was unmistakable, but everything about him was—off. Different. It’s not that Chan expected every alpha to be possessive, braindead beasts that entered all social interactions with the means to dominate; it’s just that Wonwoo didn’t… _care._ He bowed and shook hands, quietly moved his desktop, mattress, and bookshelf into the vacant room with Mingyu’s help, and stayed out of the way. Didn’t spark much conversation outside of initial greetings or whenever he felt comfortable, usually when Mingyu eased him into talking to their roommates. He was a friend of Mingyu’s from university, a writer.

Which meant he seldom left his room, especially in the first few months, and Chan—enjoying his own solitude—seldom left his. It was the sleepy, bleary-eyed mornings they shared that gave them proximity. When Chan had to get to work before opening and Wonwoo wanted tea or coffee to focus after a night of editing.

Wonwoo was curled over the whistling teapot, overgrown fringe hanging like a curtain in his eyes. His sleep shirt followed the slope of his biceps, tiny waist. It was 6:15 a.m., Chan knew they had ten minutes before Mingyu would shuffle into the kitchen in search of his favorite travel mug and a cup of coffee, and there were pearls of unspoken words rolling around in his mouth, questions he couldn’t find the answer to simply by observation. Quiet _good morning_ ’s and a shuffle for their belongings later, Chan asked, “Long night?”

Wonwoo looked up from his phone, eyes lingering. Even if he rarely spoke (at least, to Chan), his eyes gave him away. “I’m a bad procrastinator, so a lot to do, yeah,” a pause, “I play too many games.”

“Games?”

“PC games. When I’m not working.”

It was the first time Wonwoo had said something about himself, something other than the pleasantries. Chan had lived with him for four months and only knew his age, that he was from Changwon. Where he went for university and that he wrote for a living.

Chan set some rice and kimchi jjim to heat from last night (Mingyu decided to cook enough to last a week on his only day off) and leaned on the counter beside the stove, arms crossed. “What do you do?”

“Do?”

“Like,” Chan said, “what do you write about?”

Wonwoo considered him. Pot whistling, the soft thumps of somebody ambling around out in the hallway. And Chan’s nose had grown accustomed to the mesh of everyone’s scents, now so pervasive that he couldn’t smell them at all unless something was off—or he was actively looking for it—but Chan could pick it up, now. The sharp incline in Wonwoo’s pheromones as they held eye contact.

“Sci-fi,” Wonwoo said.

It took several shapes—heady and thick to distressed. And then Wonwoo was breaking eye contact to shakily remove the pot from the burner, and Mingyu walked into the kitchen, replaced what was high in the air with himself.

“Tea?” Mingyu asked, hooking his chin over Wonwoo’s shoulder.

“Caffeinated,” Wonwoo told him. “Want a cup?”

Chan silently took his food off the stove and opened the cabinets in search of some tupperware.

“You’re up to something,” Soonyoung said. “What are you up to?”

Chan settled at the table next to Hansol, across from Soonyoung. It was a slow day at work, and he’d just seen a group of high schoolers off, leaving the restaurant empty save for them. Picking up Hansol’s beer, he took a swig, said, “What am I up to?”

“Wonwoo hyung,” Hansol said. He watched aimlessly as Chan drank, his head propped up on his arm, elbow on the table. “You’re bullying him.”

Chan scoffed. Dribbles of beer dripped down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his sleeve. “ _Bullying_ him? We’re friends. He likes it.”

“Being bullied?”

“Playing around,” Chan amended firmly.

(Chan began with that. He was perplexed, being in the presence of the only alpha he’d ever known that hated it. Despised the ruts and the pheromones and the way people would cower when he raised the volume of his voice a decibel. That didn’t want power or autonomy.

Their early morning chats morphed into occasional late-night visits. The ahjumma at work always insisted on sending Chan home with a little bit of something from the kitchen, whether it be chimaek, dongchimi with rice, or any leftover anju. It was a sort of peace offering, a way to earn access to Wonwoo’s dark, messy bedroom.

They’d spent a night eating together, Chan curled up against a wall while Wonwoo chewed and typed, chewed and typed, when Chan turned to the bookshelf and read some of the titles, mumbling, “You’re secretly interested in this stuff, huh?”

Wonwoo followed Chan’s line of vision. “Oh,” he sounded slightly embarrassed, “um. Sort of. I like to know what—happens with us.”

 _The Alpha: a Crossover of Social and Biological Interactions_ ; _Beta-Omega-Alpha Hormone Dynamics_ ; _Alpha in the Modern World_ ; _Packs_. Some philosophy books on the temperament of alpha personalities. “ _Very_ interested,” Chan said. He reached up to touch the spine of the _Packs_ one, only to be rebuffed quickly by Wonwoo snatching his wrist and moving it away.

“Not with your greasy hands,” Wonwoo told him.

Oh. Considering the cleanliness of his room, he didn’t think that’d be a problem for him. Chan stared at where Wonwoo’s fingers overlapped on his wrist. “What did you learn?” he asked. “About us.”

Wonwoo let him go and leaned away. Shoving his glasses up the straight slope of his nose, he said, “That we’re not the slaves of our bodies that we’re meant to believe.”

Chan questioned the validity to that statement, when Wonwoo’s scent had spiked the moment his fingers touched the soft skin of Chan’s wrist. There are things you can’t control. A silent challenge brewed in Chan’s gut. “Cool.”)

At the restaurant, “Is it playing around if only one of you is playing?” Soonyoung asked.

“I ‘dunno,” Chan retorted, “because there’s not only one of us playing.”

Some days Chan was more sure of that than others. The first time Chan leaned over during group dinner and scented Wonwoo—just a brief little nuzzle of his nose against Wonwoo’s scent gland—Wonwoo froze, eyes dishplate wide, and then jumped up while Seungcheol was talking about mic night, scurried off.

Everyone could smell the distress. Jihoon had given Chan sharp eyes and tutted, “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Wanted to show my affection?” Chan asked. “Why not?”

That was too obvious, maybe. No one seemed to fully believe it. Scenting between alphas and ‘affection’ didn’t go hand in hand—but it was forgiven and forgotten, until Chan decided that that wasn’t enough. There were things he had to know.

A few weeks later, he came home to Jihoon and Wonwoo in the common space, talking over mixed nuts and a bottle of soju between them. “Last I heard some are on trial,” Jihoon was telling him, “but I wouldn’t say anywhere close to public use. Are the suppressants not working?”

“Yeah? I mean—in a perfect world it’d work for more than just, like, _ruts_. I don’t wanna feel any of it.”

“Right. Well—suppressants, blockers,” Jihoon said, grim, “whatever helps for now. I’ve been playing god for a few months too long.”

Chan moved to the threshold of the common space. Jihoon and Wonwoo looked up from their spot on the floor, a short-legged table between them. “Welcome home,” Wonwoo said.

Chan lifted the bag in his hand. “It’s still warm. Ahjumma heated it up for me.”

Jihoon tugged a pillow off of the couch and set it next to him. “Come on, then. I hate cold chimaek.”

“What’s on trial?” Chan asked, settling where Jihoon instructed. He set the bag on the table and let Jihoon scavenge through it.

“Hormone blockers,” Wonwoo said, “not like—not for ruts or heats. Just in general.”

“You _can_ take those for more than ruts or heats,” Jihoon said, “but it’s not safe. Can cause blood clots or permanent thyroid damage.”

“Is it not effective to take the hormones of another subgender?” Chan asked. “Like, alpha hormones if you’re an omega?”

“Not proven in trial to be effective,” Jihoon opened the carton of chimaek and picked a wing up. “It doesn’t counteract what you naturally produce.”

Chan had been building a bigger picture. It’d been another few months since their first morning conversation, and Wonwoo’s emotional proximity to Jihoon more or less confirmed what Chan theorized. “I didn’t know,” Chan told them. “This is all above my head.”

Later that night, when Wonwoo retired to his room and Jihoon allegedly went to bed, Chan flopped onto Wonwoo’s mattress and asked, “Is it unmanageable?”

Wonwoo blinked over at him. A silent question. His eyes roamed over where Chan nuzzled up into his blankets, and—there it was. The spike in scent.

“My biology?”

Not the words Chan would’ve used, but, “Yes. Is that why you want pills? To control yourself?”

“I’m not—” Wonwoo glanced over at his computer screen, then back to Chan. “I’m not out of control. I wanna be able to,” he collected some words, visibly weighed them inside of his head, “focus on work. No distractions.”

The longer Chan lied in his bed, the stronger Wonwoo felt. He was heard even if he didn’t speak.

Chan laughed. Smiled and said, “Some distractions are good, though.”

Wonwoo stopped overreacting to being scented, so Chan graduated him to morning hugs. Even if Wonwoo’s distress was thick enough to feel palpable, he’d allow it. Sometimes scent him back, if Chan initiated and Wonwoo was feeling especially brave. Being an honorary pack member helped with that, Chan presumed.

“How did you sleep?” Chan stood close and on his tip-toes, chest to chest.

Wonwoo tilted his head back from where he had it nuzzled against Chan’s throat. “Good.” Seemingly finding himself, he shied away, straightened up.

“Liar.” Chan jabbed a finger in Wonwoo’s side, laughed when Wonwoo jerked and leaned away. “I heard you bashing your keyboard at four a.m.”

“Maybe because _you_ were distracting me, I had to stay up later,” Wonwoo gave a few fingers jabs of his own, and Chan laughed and squirmed away. “I can’t pay attention with you talking my ear off.”

Chan batted his hand away. “Social interaction is good. You can do charted matches anytime.”

 _“Ranked_ matches—and I can talk to you anytime, too.”

“Then let me help you,” Chan said. “You can tell me about what you write.”

Wonwoo had the audacity to scoff at him. “One: ranked matches aren’t multiplayer. Two: you’re awful at games—”

“But how do you know that?”

“Because Mingyu is _shit_ at first-person shooters, and he told me he beat you 5-0. How do you lose to _Mingyu_ 5-0.”

That’s true. Chan thought Mingyu was a good player, actually, but—that was true. He did lose five to nothing. But, “I can beat you,” he countered, watching Wonwoo pour hot water into his cat mug and sink the tea bag in it.

“At what? Music theory? Probably—”

“Fighting,” Chan said.

Wonwoo paused, looked over at him. “Fighting… games? I used to participate in _Dead or Alive_ tourna—”

Chan slid the mug of hot tea further onto the counter—out of range for third degree burns—and instantly leaped at Wonwoo, growling low and playful in his throat. If the scenting didn’t draw the innate aggression tucked somewhere deep inside of him, Chan knew this would; he accepted that this was what he wanted to see: Wonwoo succumbing to instinct.

And it worked, if only for the few minutes that they shared the early morning kitchen. Wonwoo toppled over, a growl much less human than Chan had ever heard from him rattling through to Chan’s core. He held the upper hand for a good two seconds, the world spinning as Wonwoo clawed his way on top, shoving Chan down on his back, belly-up. Air knocked out of him, Chan gasped, yelped, forced into a submissive pose by Wonwoo’s knees and arms pinning him to the tiles.

Once the world came back into focus, there was Wonwoo—eyes back to the dish plates, canines peeking out from his open mouth. This was the brief moment of intimidation Chan felt, in their careful, early months. This was an—

“Alpha,” Chan breathed. He could feel his own instincts rearing its ugly head, a dizzying mixture of excitement and agitation. Being forced onto his back jolt-started aggression, and Chan wanted to fight, overpower, clamp his teeth down into Wonwoo’s shoulder and show him that—

“Woah! It fucking _stinks_ , what’s—” Mingyu rounded the corner, froze at the threshold to the kitchen and stared down at them. “What’re you—?”

Wonwoo leaped up and off, shoving past Mingyu to bolt down the hall and towards his room.

Chan took a shaky breath in, knocked the back of his head against the floor.

Arousal. Through the fear and irritation, there was arousal.

He liked this.

Chan ran into Mingyu after work. It was thirty minutes to midnight, and the apartment was dark and quiet; Chan couldn’t smell Jihoon when Mingyu slipped out of his room—chronic scent blockers were very effective—but he could smell Mingyu. Remnants of whatever had happened before Chan got home seeping out through the crack in the door.

Mingyu eyed him like he’d done something worth chastising. Clicking the door shut behind him, he whispered, weak, “Hi.”

Chan glanced at Jihoon’s now closed bedroom door. Then to Mingyu, “Hi.”

“This isn’t,” Mingyu started, “I help.”

He wasn’t sure if this was worth exploring. Jihoon was a very private person, especially where Chan was considered, and even this felt like a breach of that. He hadn’t _meant_ to see, but Jihoon wouldn’t give a fuck whether it was intentional or not. Mingyu just wasn’t… the alpha he thought would be chosen. Hansol and Jihoon got along well, didn’t they?

Maybe Mingyu could see his brain running those calculations, because his embarrassed smile turned wonky. “It’s fine,” Chan said, not because he cared, but because he didn’t have anything else productive to say. And because it _was_ okay. “We all help each other.”

It was a topic brought up only during house meetings—taking the edge off heats or ruts. Soonyoung was a god sent for that, calming both the alphas and omega, but there was a firm rule to take heat and rut suppressants starting days before their cycle and continuing until two days after. There were, of course, phases where the pills took the heightened emotions off and not much else, but that was what their pack members were for. (And Soonyoung. God-sent Kwon Soonyoung.)

Chan never knew when Jihoon’s heats were, because Jihoon masked his scent to the point that he seldom knew whether he was present or not. He hadn’t even thought of him as a sexual being, to be frank. They didn’t talk much. The closest Chan had come to assuming Jihoon was getting through the remnant symptoms of a heat were the days that he’d scritch at Chan’s nape hairs while they had bi-monthly movie nights. On rarer moments, he’d scent Chan after a stressful day of job-searching. _He’s a useful omega sometimes_ , Seungcheol would giggle, and then promptly dodge Jihoon’s karate chops.

So that was. That. Chan tried at a smile and continued down the hall, shuffling slowly in case Mingyu had something else he wanted to get off his chest. He cared a little bit, honestly. Curiosity more than anything else.

“Hey,” Mingyu said. Chan could feel him following close behind. They lingered at Chan’s door—Mingyu and Seungcheol’s shared one next to his—and met eyes through the dark of the hallway. “You and… how are you and Wonwoo hyung?”

Chan registered this as Mingyu trying to be a good hyung. A good alpha, too, since Seungcheol wasn’t present. Did Mingyu tell him about what he saw?

Unlikely. Seungcheol hadn’t come to find or message him during his shift. He wouldn’t let that one go.

“Yeah,” Chan said, “we were playing around.”

The distress was obvious. There was no way Mingyu didn’t pick up on it; he’d never been the best at conflict resolution, though. So, “Right,” Mingyu said, “okay. Be careful. He can be sensitive.”

Not sensitive enough. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Chan told him.

“They all want years of experience,” Chan told Wonwoo. He was showered and clean after his shift, sprawled out on Wonwoo’s cluttered rug while Wonwoo worked on his manuscript. “Or a graduate. How do you get experience if nobody wants to hire you?”

Their scuffle in the kitchen was swept off into a secluded corner, forgotten with the scenting infraction during dinner. That was Chan’s favorite part about Wonwoo—he never liked to talk about it. He’d let Chan scent shirts and blankets and nip at him and say nothing after the fact.

(Maybe Chan _was_ a bully.)

“It’d be easier to find a job outside of the city,” Wonwoo said to his desktop screen. “Have you considered seeing what’s available in Iksan?”

Chan tittered, staring up at Wonwoo as Wonwoo pointedly stared at his word document. “I’m not moving back home,” inspiration struck, and he leaned up on an elbow to frown, “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No,” Wonwoo stuttered, taking a quick glance down, “I’m just—if you want a job in entertainment, it may be easier to start small and work up. You hopped a lot of steps here.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Chan glanced over at the bookshelf. “Why are you so into this stuff?”

“So obviously changing the subject.”

“You have, like, twenty books about subgender studies,” Chan retorted, “I can’t not bring it up. Weren’t you a Chemistry major?”

Wonwoo turned his upper body to stare down at Chan. A familiar, two a.m. sight: the dark, cluttered room, the fluorescent lights casting shadows along the sharp edges of Wonwoo’s face, bed head and long fingers curled over a keyboard with purple backlights. Soft under eye bags, glasses that are perched on the pointed tip of Wonwoo’s nose.

A mixture of disdain and arousal.

“If I can figure out how it works,” Wonwoo says, “what’s, like, biological and what’s socially-constructed… I can figure out—me.”

Chan kept Wonwoo’s eyes, unmoving.

“Do you not care? What it means to be an alpha in the modern world? What part of us is leftover instinct and what is us just playing a role?” Wonwoo swiveled in his chair to face Chan, hands coming down to hold onto his own knees. Gaze flicking up in thought, he said, “Our instincts are useless. Nesting and scents and—and _packs_ don’t matter in the society we live in today. They obstruct us from getting anything productive done. They’re _intrusive_.”

“You think they’re intrusive?”

“They are. It’s intrusive. I have deadlines to meet and I’m stuck in a week-long rut because my body wants me to procreate? And I don’t have the mental or financial means to have a child? I—I get irritated because a foreign alpha gets close to what my body registers as a pack member? I’m always fucking possessive and horny and I—I can’t focus on work when I want to fuck everything or attack somebody or both. Pills don’t work, therapy doesn’t work, nothing fucking works because it’s all hormonal and I’m told everywhere I go that this is normal. Why the fuck do we accept that this is normal? Who said we _have_ to live like th—”

“Alpha.”

Wonwoo froze. Stared, mouth open on the rest of his sentence. Pupils blown wide and black against the light of his computer.

Chan sat up, folded his legs in front of him. “I embrace it. I _like_ it. I have more control of myself than I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

No response. Wonwoo closed his mouth.

“Life changed for me overnight,” Chan continued. “Literally. Do you know how people treat you when they assume you’re never going to present as an alpha?”

“That’s the problem,” Wonwoo said. “That’s precisely the problem.”

“Well—it’s not a problem for me. And it’s not _all_ we are. You’re not only an alpha and you’re not only a man. So. If it’s control you want, then fight for it.”

“I _am_.” Now Wonwoo’s scent spiked. Aggression. Chan felt his own burn in kind.

“Are you?” Chan clambered to his feet. “Really?”

Wonwoo watched him quietly. Watched as Chan approached, light on his toes, one step after another. It was an overt sign, one Wonwoo responded to with a shaky, “You want to see me fail.”

Chan laughed. Got closer, close enough to feel a surge of excitement rise at Wonwoo’s building arousal. “I wanna see you fight.”

When Chan leaped, Wonwoo sprung up, momentum knocking his chair over. The scuffle was more nails and teeth than their first in the kitchen. Wonwoo used the strength in his arms to shove Chan down onto the rug, a snarl ripped out from his throat. Chan swung an elbow where he could before it was slammed down by a tight grip on his bicep. Feet flailing, Chan growled and thrashed, catching skin at a Wonwoo’s shoulder and chin right before teeth threatened to clamp down on the front of his throat.

It was over within seconds. Chan had an advantage with his strong thighs, but that was useless when Wonwoo had him pinned on his arms, bigger body between his legs. Chan gave a few more growls, then a whimper. “That’s not fair,” he tried. “This isn’t winning.”

“You want me to hurt you?” Wonwoo asked. There was still an inhuman rumble to his voice, hair standing up off of his skin. “I don’t do that. I’m not—”

“You are,” Chan panted. He looked up into his eyes, where Wonwoo’s hair draped around the shadowy landscape of his face. “And that’s _fine_. You’re in control.”

Chan thought he would’ve done it. The air was so thick with Wonwoo that it was difficult to breathe, let alone keep himself from unraveling. Wonwoo’s internal dialogue was translated through his pheromones—wanting to own. To make Chan submit so that he wouldn’t have his pride challenged ever again.

And Chan wanted him to do it. He knew that if he could hear Wonwoo, Wonwoo could hear that, too. He tipped his chin up and challenged him with his eyes. _Show me_. _Don’t back down._

“Is this what control means to you?” Wonwoo asked in an exhale. His hands tightened where they held Chan below the shoulders.

It meant making the conscious decision to succumb to his impulses. To ask Wonwoo to force him to submit with his eyes and his disrespect, fight the thousands of years of instinct shouting at him to put his chin down and rip Wonwoo’s throat out instead.

Control was taking any opportunity given to him to get ahead, even if that meant playing dumb, stereotypical alpha the whole way up.

“Yes,” Chan told him.

Sometimes Wonwoo played along when Chan tried to get a rise out of him. Movie nights where Chan would boldly nuzzle his nose against Wonwoo’s gland and pay the price with two, large hands at his waist, shoving him down and away. Then laughter would burst from Chan’s chest, and he’d grapple and fight until they were both panting messes on the living room floor and Soonyoung was tossing pillows at them and shouting, “You’re ruining movie night, you brutes!”

And then mornings where Chan would try to assert dominance by shoving Wonwoo aside to reach the stove, and Wonwoo would call his bluff and shove back at him. Those were the days Mingyu would amble inside and grouchily tell them, “The stench is gonna wake everyone up. _Stop_.”

“You know what you need to do,” Chan gasped one day, once again trapped between Wonwoo’s body and the floor, “if you want me to stop.”

They both pretended not to feel Wonwoo’s cock pressed to Chan’s thigh. Wonwoo said, “I won’t. I’m not,” for the hundredth time since Chan took up his one-sided challenge.

The night after sleeping in Wonwoo’s bed, Chan goes to find Jihoon. It’s quiet, Seungcheol and Mingyu in another city, Soonyoung and Hansol at work. Wonwoo is in his room either working or playing games—which leaves the only person Chan can ask.

He knocks and is let into the room within seconds. Jihoon tugs him past the threshold as soon as he opens the door and shuts it behind him.

Like Wonwoo’s, it’s dark save for the computer sitting on the desk by Jihoon’s bed—but it’s very neat, and there’s no bookshelf. Just a desk, a bed, and studio equipment sitting behind his desktop screen.

“Hyung—”

“Come,” Jihoon doesn’t let go of Chan’s arm until they’re at his bed, and Jihoon sits Chan down onto it, crawling on after him, “lend me your pheromones for a sec.”

He isn’t sure what that means. At first, anyway; Jihoon maneuvers their bodies so that Chan is lying on his back and Jihoon is almost completely on top of him, and everything begins to make more sense. His arms are brought up and around Jihoon’s middle, and Jihoon tucks his face against the side of Chan’s throat, nuzzling to get comfortable. Suppressants, scent blockers, or both, there are symptoms of a heat that nothing can erase.

“Okay,” Jihoon’s mouth creates shapes on Chan’s skin, “what d’you want.”

Jihoon’s skin is damp and feverish where they touch. A small, bulky space heater. “Are you embarrassed of being an omega?”

There’s a moment of silence as the question is contemplated. Then, a titter and Jihoon’s quiet, “Straight to the point, huh?”

“You asked me what I wanted. Don’t you like efficiency?”

Jihoon pinches his side and Chan giggles, squirms away as much as he can under 300kgs of man. “Brat.”

He settles down again and hums inquisitively. “Embarrassed isn’t the word. I’m,” he pauses, “resolved.”

 _Resolved_. The very intentional and meticulous neutral scent of Jihoon’s room and person begs another narrative.

“I’ve accepted it,” Jihoon continues, “and now I need to move on and live my life.”

“How?”

“The best I can. With whatever helps.” Jihoon lifts his head up to blink at Chan. “I’m not embarrassed. I would’ve preferred to never present, though.”

Chan watches him. “Like Wonwoo hyung?”

“Yeah. I guess so. Less distractions.”

 _Soonyoung doesn’t have to worry about any of this shit_. _No stupid posturing or getting headaches from pheremones all over the place._ Most people are betas. He’d read that, once.

Chan wonders if the disconnect he’s experiencing is because of a miswiring. A childhood that protected him from upbringings that deviated from his own. “I don’t know what that’s like,” he says. “I don’t _think_ I know what it feels like to be distracted by… by being an alpha.”

“Everyone has different temperaments.” Jihoon’s words string together, slurred as if he’s on the outskirts of sleep. “Your scent isn’t strong. Seungcheol hyung is the same way.”

“Not having a strong scent?” He’s become accustomed, unable to pinpoint moments where Seungcheol’s presence overpowered the others.

“Being subtle in general. Not everyone’s genetics work that way.”

“What does it feel like for you?”

Jihoon snickers sleepily. “Lots of questions tonight. Did you drink?”

“No,” Chan gives his middle a squeeze in playful retribution; Jihoon snickers some more but doesn’t try to ease away, “I’m curious. I think I was a bit too sheltered growing up.”

Jihoon falls silent for so long that Chan wonders if he’s lost him. The occasional keyboard smash carries down the hall, the apartment otherwise devoid of life. Then, softly, Jihoon mutters, “Without my pills? Feels like I’m going to burn alive, in heat or not.” He does a tiny laugh, “Did Seungcheol hyung tell you? I ran out of scent blockers one day and he said I smelled fertile. I imagined myself knocked up and got so nauseous I sprinted to the bathroom and vomited. Chunjang tastes pretty good the second time.”

Chan wrinkles his nose, giggles. “Ew.”

“Mm, yeah. It can be hell if I don’t manage it.”

They let the topic go. Long enough for Jihoon to actually fall asleep on top of him—and Chan, too.

When he wakes up at some indeterminable time in the future—can’t have been more than two hours—he briefly wonders if he’s still dreaming. There’s a heavy, squirming weight on top of him and what almost smells like chunjang in his nose, sweet. Someone snuffles by his ear, and his brain reorients to time and place. It’s not sweet chunjang. It’s Jihoon. Wet. He’s wet and—

“Chan-ah,” Jihoon’s voice has lowered to a breathy quality, an inflection Chan has never heard from him before, “if y’don’t wanna help, you should probably leave.”

Sweet. Chan can’t remember the last time he’s been in proximity to an omega that he could smell. They usually wear scent blockers outside, and back home he’d known only a handful of kids that presented before graduation. His previous partners were betas, one or two alphas.

Never an omega.

“Let me,” Chan says, “I can help.”

Jihoon takes a stuttering breath, vibrating through into Chan’s ribcage. Body shifting, restless, he gasps, “O-okay, quickly,” and reaches a hand between to shakily shove his own sleep shorts down. The scent of his heat and arousal is so much stronger now, dizzying, and Chan only realizes his body has reacted to it when Jihoon lifts up to reach into Chan’s sweatpants next. He’s hard. Hard and filling up nicely with Jihoon’s fingers wrapped around him, guiding him free.

“Just gotta,” Jihoon slurs, kicking his own shorts off in a scramble, “get it in me.”

He isn’t given an opportunity to obey before Jihoon eases him in himself, lying on top of Chan’s body with his legs spread, hooked at his hips. Jihoon lets out soft, high breath as his body molds to fit Chan’s cock, so wet and tight that fuzz blurs in Chan’s eyes. This is the allure of an omega in heat. This is—

“Shit.” Chan blinks Jihoon’s flushed face into view, how his pale skin is glowing red with a thin sheen of sweat.

“You’re,” Chan starts, nearly loses his train of thought when Jihoon rolls his hips down, their chests flush together, sliding him farther in, “burning up. Hot—inside you—”

“Imagine how I feel,” Jihoon says, words pinched tight. “Like suh—somebody set me on fire.” Then he starts to ride him, just a few, languid rolls that he can manage with the leverage he has, knees pressed into the mattress at Chan’s hips, nose shoved against his scent gland. His breaths come out thin, almost a moan, almost nothing at all.

Chan doesn’t know what to do with his hands, his body. He wants to hold Jihoon by his ass and guide him along, wants to bend his knees and fuck up—but that’s probably pushing his luck. It’s so slick where their groins meet, between Jihoon’s legs. Even moaning feels like an infraction. He makes fists in Jihoon’s blanket and forces himself still. Melts under Jihoon’s scenting, inside of Jihoon’s heat.

“Guess I know—why it’s called a heat,” Chan gives a strained laugh.

Jihoon fucks down, and this time Chan can’t hold back a soft little groan. Faltering, Jihoon breathes, “What, you never fucked an omega before?”

Chan tries to say _never had the chance_ , ends up groaning again instead.

“You _were_ sheltered, weren’t you?” Jihoon’s laugh is somewhere between a giggle and a moan. “You’re a dancer, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Then prove it. Move those hips, virgin.”

Not a fucking virgin. Chan resists the petulance—Jihoon would absolutely make fun of him—and decides to just prove it. Fighting against the voice telling him not to, Chan grabs Jihoon’s hips with both hands, holding on tight, and uses his feet as leverage to pivot up.

A punched-out sound is forced from Jihoon’s chest, breath ghosting over Chan’s throat. “Good, yeah,” he slurs, “good pup.”

Chan keeps that momentum. Fucks in an even pace, sinking his teeth into his own bottom lip and trying not to wax poetic about how fucking _incredible_ Jihoon feels inside. How it’s as if Chan’s dick was created to fuck him, nestled perfectly where Jihoon burns the hottest. Almost feels like he’s drowning. He’s going to be swallowed whole and never recover.

“Does this,” Chan says, “does this douse it?”

Jihoon lifts his head up from Chan’s gland and regards him, lids heavy and mouth hanging open. “Yeah,” he answers. “This douses it. This—this is me _on_ heat suppressants.” He stutters out a laugh, “Imagine— _ah, ah_ —without it—”

Chan can’t imagine without it. Jihoon is already hot to the touch, Chan’s palms slipping where they cling to his hips. He fixates on the rhythmic undulation of the springboards beneath them, to Jihoon’s moans that sound like his singing. Thin, high. He thinks of what Wonwoo said, too—that his ruts feel like they never stop.

Chan’s ruts don’t feel like that. He hasn’t had a rut off of his suppressants in a few years now, but he does remember how even when wanting to fuck everything within a centimeter of its life, he can sew it inside, hold off until he can release his energy on something (or someone). Chan during his ruts (and under the influence of his rut suppressants) is more playful, less rational.

He’s never heard Jihoon sound so relieved when his knot catches at his rim, over and over, until it’s too big to slip out again. Jihoon slumps down on top of him, Chan rocking in and out as much as he can, overwhelmed. He can hear Jihoon gasping beside his ear while he pants, twitches, rocks some more before spilling inside, seemingly endless.

“Not bad,” Jihoon says, finally. “Had better, but—not bad.”

“If you’re gonna insult me, I can go,” Chan manages through the fog of his orgasm.

Jihoon demonstrates the impossibility to the threat by trying to lift up off of his knot, catching. Chan hisses and scrambles to grab Jihoon’s hips and hold him still. “Gonna have to deal with my insults for the next twenty minutes to an hour,” Jihoon says, “sorry.” He doesn’t sound very sorry.

Chan slumps onto the mattress. “This is what I get for trying to do you a favor?”

“You got your dick wet by your first omega; this was mutually beneficial and you know it.”

There’s no winning this. So Chan admits his defeat with a tiny grumble, closes his eyes to prevent havinng to watch Jihoon’s victorious little smirk spread on his face.

It follow him to work. The idea of fluctuating temperaments, that there are experiences that aren’t universal even if the presentation seems the same. He cleans off the grills in-between table turnovers, watches idly as people eat and drink. How the omegas pour drinks while everyone holds conversation.

His manager bows once payment is made, and the customers always fold lower.

_The Alpha: a Crossover of Social and Biological Interactions._ Chan reads some of it. Three-hundred pages of psychosocial research that Chan doesn’t have the means nor the mental power to comb through. He can tell that Wonwoo is trying not to watch him while he flips through each chapter, picking up some words while ignoring paragraphs that go beyond four sentences.

 _What does it mean to be an alpha? There are complex systems at play within the body that we cannot fully rationalize. Dr. Min Youngsik of Pohang University calls the intersection of these systems_ innately imperfect. _“How do we rationalize something that is not rational? The human mind is a completely separate entity from hormone distribution._

_“The same way in which personality is a complicated mix of nature and nurture is the way the crossover between an alpha’s biology and environment operates. How can we explain natural aggression and hormonal aggression in an alpha where pack survival was once contingent on such behaviors? Why do we assume the same aggression in an omega is environmental or personality-driven when the assumption is ‘hormones’ in the alpha?”_

Chan looks up to find Wonwoo peeking. He wonders.

“How much of yourself are you holding back?”

Wonwoo’s lips part as if he wasn’t expecting that question. Not a real one, anyway. Still, he vocalizes uselessly before giving Chan, “What parts of myself?”

“The real you.”

“I don’t,” Wonwoo blinks rapidly, shifts in his seat, “I have no idea what’s real or not.”

It all is. Every part of it, ugly and cruel and—everything.

“I think whatever you’re feeling is real,” Chan says. “Does the reason really matter?”

Something seems to switch inside of Wonwoo after their previous talk. Their last two talks. Like he has to— _wants_ to—prove himself.

No more cowering and scurrying away when his manhood is put to the test; no more dishplate-wide eyes, curled shoulders. Instead, his pupils eclipse the brown in his irides, and Chan chokes on a lungful of Wonwoo’s scent when Wonwoo takes the bait, pushes back against Chan’s pigtail tugging. Chan nips at the scab he left on Wonwoo’s chin and Wonwoo nips harder.

Jihoon watches with pointed disinterest when they scuffle during movie nights. Soonyoung swats at them with rolled-up magazines when he catches them shoving and snarling in the kitchen. Hansol snickers and dodges as Chan leaps at Wonwoo in the hallway and drags him to the floor.

It’s on quiet, sticky nights when Chan forces Wonwoo out of his computer chair and attempts to knock him on the ground. Wonwoo will whine, “Chan I’m _working_ ,” but grabs Chan by the back of his neck and knocks him over. Sometimes Chan is already on the bed, pretending to take Wonwoo’s territory by flashing his sharp teeth and crouching low when Wonwoo tries to go to bed.

Those are the nights that they roll around in his sheets, now strong with the stench of Chan and Wonwoo both, subduing one another over and over again.

“Let them play,” Seungcheol says with a vague hand-wave. “This is the most exercise Wonwoo’s gotten since he moved in.”

“Are we sure this is playing?” Mingyu asks. “Are we gonna pretend we don’t smell that?”

Soonyoung looks up from his gukbap. “Smell what?”

“That joke doesn’t get any funnier the more you tell it,” Jihoon shoots him a quick glance, then over to where Chan is practically hanging from Wonwoo’s shoulders. Somehow getting the water from the filter morphed into _stop Wonwoo from getting the water from the filter so you can do it first. (_ Chan blames it on pre-rut jitters.)

Soonyoung giggles and stuffs his soup spoon into his mouth, cheeks curving over his eyes.

“I think it’s best,” Hansol says from Jihoon’s left, “that we pretend we don’t smell it.”

“No, really—what are we smelling?” Soonyoung cards over everyone’s faces for a hint, frowning. “You know this makes me feel left out!”

“Keep this up and I’ll bite you,” Wonwoo is saying from the kitchen, holding back laughter as Chan continues to cling, nip at the skin on his arms and shoulder.

“Do it,” Chan says, “I want you to.”

Hansol gives Soonyoung a tired look. “I’m serious when I say you don’t wanna know.”

Chan feels reaffirmed in his convictions. He carries the wounds from their rough-housing like a medal, a brand that says _look what I’ve gotten Wonwoo to do_. Nails on his back from rolling around on Wonwoo’s bedroom floor, superficial teeth punctures on top of his hands from trying to force Wonwoo to lie belly-up. Fingerprint-shaped bruises on his hips when Wonwoo dragged him down and off of the bed so he could lie there instead.

Twin nail scratches and bites and bruises on Wonwoo’s skin, too.

“Will you admit you’re bullying him now?” Hansol asks. Another day of Soonyonug and Hansol stopping by for galbi and soju, another slow, lazy Wednesday evening. Chan sneaks glasses when his manager turns around to talk to the restaurant ahjumma.

“It’s not bullying if he’s doing it, too,” Chan says. “We’ve been over this.”

“He doesn’t like to fight,” Hansol retorts.

“It’s not fighting; we’re _playing_.”

“ _Whatever_ it is, his rut starts next week, so I need you to stop starting,” Soonyoung checks his phone calendar, “tomorrow. He can get rough pre-rut. It’s dangerous.”

Danger. Hansol gives him a long look then, picking up on the spike in Chan’s pheremones. “Chan,” Hansol deadpans.

“You’re spending it with him?” Chan asks Soonyoung.

“Jihoonie and I,” Soonyoung says. “I have to work a few overnights.”

Wonwoo and Jihoon. Logically, it makes sense—albeit Chan’s never been privy to whatever connection Wonwoo and Chan have. Chan wonders how that looks. He knows how he and Wonwoo look, how Wonwoo’s body eclipses his own when he has Chan pinned beneath him, shoulders curved over Chan’s smaller, stouter frame.

Jihoon is very fit, yeah, but nothing escapes the fact that he’s small. His hands swallowed up in Wonwoo’s when they pass drinks or glasses to one another. Jihoon craning his neck up while they walk side by side down the hall and talk. Wonwoo sliding up and over Jihoon to reach for something and Jihoon all but disappearing from this reality.

And Jihoon rode Chan that one night—but does he let Wonwoo get on top? Control the pace of their hips while Jihoon lies there and takes it, moaning high and thin? He seems to trust Wonwoo much more than any other alpha Chan has seen him interact with; he’s sure it has something to do with the fact that Wonwoo pretends he has no subgender as much as humanly possible.

How does Jihoon look when he takes Wonwoo’s knot? Wonwoo is big. Chan felt him; even half-hard and rutting against his thigh or belly during playfights he’s large. Omegas are created to fit a large cock and even larger knot inside of them, aren’t they? Chan wonder if he’ll be able to fit—

“Dude,” Hansol elbows Chan in the side, making him leap out of his skin and thoughts, “you really need to wear scent blockers when you’re in public.”

“Did you get horny thinking about Wonwoo spending his rut with me?” Soonyoung wiggles his eyebrows. “If you want to join in just say the word. I don’t mind an audience.”

Chan rolls his eyes and stands up; a group of university students have just meandered in. “I have to get back to work.”

“Smelling like that? Try to cool off in the bathrooms first or some—”

“Eat your food and get out,” Chan shoves Hansol’s shoulder and scoots out of the booth. Soonyoung and Hansol, snickering, watch him take the walk of shame to the toilets.

True to Soonyoung’s word, Wonwoo pre-rut is rougher. He’s quick to annoy and quicker to turn on, too. Chan enters Wonwoo’s room at two in the morning, fresh from his post-shift shower, and Wonwoo says, “Not tonight, Chan,” without turning around to look. Chan leaps at him anyway, and his next badge of honor are claws and teeth imprints in his biceps, the softest part of his thighs when Wonwoo gets him on his back and shoves them apart.

Two days to his rut, and Wonwoo drags Chan from the heated floor to his bed, tosses him on top and crawls after him. Chan is sweaty and gasping, having just rolled around with Wonwoo for fifteen minutes prior, and he’s nearly empty when Wonwoo grab his arm hard enough to bruise and forces him up and against his pillow.

“I’m serious,” Wonwoo says. His voice has dropped to that inhuman quality again, a growl given to him by his ancestors. Chan’s instincts warn him for danger. It injects excitement straight into his bloodstream.

“I’m serious,” Chan parrots. His fringe is sticky, creating tendrils on his forehead and temples. “Make me submit, alpha. Show me you’re the boss.”

Wonwoo’s chest rumbles with remnants of that intoxicating growl. Still, he does nothing but stare and pin Chan down with his blown pupils, his heavy limbs. Chan’s back and leg muscles are sore from too much wrestling; he won’t win this even if he tries.

He’s going to try.

“Beat me and I’ll present to you like an omega,” Chen breathes, gives a crazed little laugh; he’s so hard it hurts. “Unless you want to make me? If you can get me in position I—”

Wonwoo shoves his face into Chan’s scent gland. And Chan’s instant reaction is to jackhammer, body bucking to get away from its supposed threat. But Wonwoo holds him tighter, growls falling into little whimpers as he scents him, ruts his fully hard cock against Chan’s hip like he can’t help it.

“Hyung—”

“You need to go,” Wonwoo bites out. His wet breath ghosts over Chan’s gland, and then there’s his mouth, his lips. A hint of tongue, and Chan bucks again, pants.

Chan doesn’t go. “With me,” he groans, grabbing Wonwoo’s hips to line him up and—yeah, yeah, perfect, their cocks slipping against one another through the thin layers of their sleep pants. Wonwoo teases teeth at his gland on a whine, and stars burst behind Chan’s lids, white-hot. “ _Yeah_ —”

The headboard nudges against Wonwoo’s wall as they rock their cocks together. Wonwoo’s body is large, firm, sinking Chan into the soft give of the mattress; his breaths are heavy. Like Jihoon a week earlier, his skin is wet with exertion and heat. Chan chases the subdued friction at their groins, clawing at Wonwoo’s clothed back in a futile attempt to control the frantic pace of their hips.

When Wonwoo has him pinned there’s no escape. Chan can’t run. He doesn’t want to. He whines Wonwoo’s name in several inflections— _Won-hyung, hyung, Wonwoo_ —and sighs when Wonwoo fucks once, twice, thrusts stuttering, and comes on a, “Fuck-shit, _shit_ —”

He doesn’t stop fucking against him. His pace falters but doesn’t slow, come soaking through to Chan’s sleep pants, and he’s already on his second orgasm when Chan’s vision blacks out, returns, and Chan comes, too.

The theory is that he triggers Wonwoo’s rut four days early. Soonyoung is upset with him since he’d had ligthened up his workload to prepare for the brunt of Wonwoo’s hormonal storm, but Jihoon waves him off and mutters, “It’s fine; I work from home anyway.”

“This shouldn’t be your job, though,” Soonyoung tries. They’ve managed a dinner night with Chan, Jihoon, Soonyoung, and Hansol, everyone else either out at work or caught up in a mess of sweat and water bottles (Wonwoo). “I’ll—I’ll talk to my manager and see if I can work something out?”

“It shouldn’t be your job, either,” Jihoon counters. He wags his chopsticks at Soonyoung, to which Hansol shoves down without looking away from his bowl of bokkeumbap. Chan pointedly avoids Jihoon’s stare while Jihoon continues, “I got it. To quote Seungcheol hyung: I’m useful sometimes.”

Mutually beneficial, is more like it. Chan’s room is next to Jihoon’s but a few doors down from Wonwoo’s; he can’t hear too much from his. Whenever he ambles by, though, he can hear steady creaking, some hushed voices. Jihoon’s occasional raspy laughter tugged into a different frequency. One breathier.

More intimate.

Soonyoung goes to work, Hansol busses tables at a night club, and Chan is home on his day off, standing out in the hallway, restless. Listening.

Wonwoo will grumble, springboards creaking, and sometimes— _sometimes_ —Jihoon’s moan is loud. Clipped. Stuttered _ah-ah_ s to more mumbling and laughter. There’s only so much Chan can take before he palms at himself, cock filling up nicely in his shorts.

He rediscovers his sense of shame when the bed knocks against the wall, loud enough to startle him from where he stands at the door.

Soonyoung delivers bottles of water, pork belly kimbap, sausage peels, and his services when Jihoon’s too fucked out to keep going. For the second time since knowing him, Chan can smell Jihoon’s scent as he moves from Wonwoo’s room to his own. Jihoon’s and Wonwoo’s, muddled together.

He can’t help himself. “You smell like him,” Chan tells Jihoon from his own, cracked door, watching quietly as Jihoon, sleep clothes hanging off of him, passes by.

Jihoon gives him a tired stare. The bags beneath his eyes come off deeper in the overhead lighting. “You do, too,” he says.

He shuts the door behind him.

Soonyoung is louder when Wonwoo fucks him. Chan doesn’t have to leave his room to hear them. He puts some headphones in and resumes his job search.

“What’ll you do once you figure out what’s what? Alpha you and real you?”

Wonwoo looks over from where he’s lying, supine, on his messy bed. He’s sweating bullets, chest rising and falling in harsh breaths. Shirtless, flushed, temporarily sated. Soonyoung had just left to start his shift at the club and handed Chan off snacks to give to Wonwoo. _He’s calm for now, but once he starts getting hard again call Jihoon hyung_ , he’d told him.

And then Chan is left in Wonwoo’s room, tossing tteokbokki chip bags at Wonwoo from across the room so he can remain by the bookshelf. _Alpha in the Modern World_ sits open in front of him.

“This—this isn’t a conversation I can have right now,” Wonwoo pants.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Chan continues, “like—what I’d do if I were you, and I wanted to know if I was horny because of _me_ or horny because of what I am. Is there anything you _can_ do?”

Wonwoo stares, unblinking. His lips stretched into a thin line, jaw pulsing with the rhythm of his breaths. “You know I can’t think straight, right? I’m—I can’t answer that question.”

Chan takes a glance at the book. He’d gotten to the third chapter out of twenty, since it’s an easier read than the other one. “I can,” he says. “Either way, I’ll still be horny. Nothing would change.”

“Pills,” Wonwoo tries. His voice strains as if it pains him to create syllables with his lips. “Once the blockers come out—then I’ll know. Things will change.”

He looks up. Wonwoo’s eyes are almost entirely black. His hair damp and stringy with sweat. Somewhere in the thick curtain of Wonwoo’s pheremones, Chan can still find Jihoon.

Wonwoo’s scent is spiking again and he was instructed to find Jihoon.

Chan pushes up to his feet. Wonwoo’s eyes track him. “Let me help you,” Chan says.

Wonwoo somehow has the mental power to laugh, incredulous. “I’d tear you up.”

“Tear me up.”

“Are you suicidal?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Chan scoffs, “I can take you.”

“I’ve won everytime,” Wonwoo says. “You’ve never beaten me.”

Chan is to the edge of the bed now, staring down as Wonwoo stares up. “I’ll try my best.” His eyes say, _no matter how hard I try, I want you to win_.

Even if he doesn’t speak, Wonwoo hears him. That’s one thing years of evolution hasn’t erased.

Wonwoo does a creaky, pressured laugh. Licks his lips. “You’re crazy.”

Chan is reminded that this is Wonwoo on his rut suppressants somewhere in-between. That explains why he’s still coherent enough to talk to him, to not squeeze as hard as his alpha may want him to. Chan swings and writhes, tossing a fist that catches Wonwoo on his jaw; Chan’s lungs are promptly snuffed when Wonwoo slams him down, face-first, into his mattress.

There’s a pervasive stench of Wonwoo’s sweat and dried slick from Jihoon in the comforter. The rusty sting of blood fills Chan’s mouth once Wonwoo lifts and slams him down again, his own teeth coming down to bite his tongue from the force.

Chan’s struggling itches at Wonwoo’s instincts in the worst way. He knows. Still, he struggles, snarls, twists his head to try and rip into the skin on Wonwoo’s hairy knuckles. Wonwoo presses his cheek into the pillow with one hand, the other scrambling to shove Chan’s shorts to under his asscheeks. Chan is busying gasping for air, disoriented; Wonwoo frees his own, leaking cock next, shoves it up between his ass.

“Chan,” he says. His voice is completey a growl now, terrifying enough that pleasure blooms in Chan’s groin. He’s hard and aching, scrambling fruitlessly for purchase on the fitted sheet. “Re-ally—if you don’t want me t—”

“C’mon,” Chan gasps. His clawing tugs a corner of the fitted sheet free. “Do it—alpha, _alpha_ —”

Wonwoo’s cock is heavy and feverish against Chan’s skin. Wonwoo keeps one palm between Chan’s shoulderblades to keep him down, where he wants him, while the other’s thumb keeps his cock thrusting along Chan’s asscheeks. The force of Wonwoo’s hips jostles Chan forward, punching every exhale out of his chest. It’s frantic, leaning on animalistic, Wonwoo so wet with precome that it gives way to an easy slide. Sometimes his cockhead will slide across the soft skin of Chan’s balls, and Chan’s eyes will spark on and off, on and off.

There isn’t much stimulation on Chan’s behalf. He whines whenever Wonwoo’s rhythm stutters and catches at his rim, maddening, and other times their cocks line up—but it’s the implication that has Chan’s dick heavy between his legs. The way their skin slaps, harsh, Chan’s body rocking up towards the headboard; how, if anyone walks by the door, it’ll sound like they’re fucking. It unmistakenly sounds like fucking. Wonwoo’s groans, Chan panting _alpha, please, please_ , how the thrusts lean on painful, Wonwoo’s pelvis hitting his asscheeks over and over.

“Wanted—to do this—in the kitchen,” Wonwoo is trying, “when you jumped me and—and I had you under me. Wanted to mate you but—but also rip your throat out,” he takes a gulping breath, “I’m—I’m afraid of myself—”

Chan moans. He’s drooling, he’s drooling into the pillow and can’t help it. “I’m not afraid,” he whines. “You’re not—”

“You should be.” And then Wonwoo leans over, draping his body on top of Chan’s. They flop onto the mattress, and Chan is truly pinned under him now, Wonwoo’s dick rutting up against the small of his back in an erratic pace. Close—he has to be close. Chan’s dick fucks into the mattress as Wonwoo fucks into him. “I could do it right now—rip your throat out. You couldn’t stop me.”

Chan imagines it. The blinding, hot-white pain of Wonwoo sinking his teeth into his nape and pulling up the muscle, popping his artery. Bleeding out on the mattress. Would Jihoon be able to smell the masacre from his room?

Who would they be more upset with—Chan, for baiting Wonwoo’s instincts for months, or Wonwoo? Themselves, maybe, for not stopping it?

“Bite me,” Chan says without thinking, “bite me, bite me, hyu—”

His entire body shakes in his orgasm. It’s a ripple effect, beginning from where Wonwoo’s canines threaten the soft skin of his throat, right where his scent gland lies.

Wonwoo doesn’t bite. He comes in thick spurts along Chan’s sweaty back, scenting, scenting, growl rattling Chan’s skeleton from its skin.

Chan’s excitement bleeds out.

Wonwoo’s lucid moments vary. The longest is twenty minutes. He uses most of it to apologize, slurring, “I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t have,” while Chan catches his bearings in the bed beside him.

“It’s fine,” Chan says for the fifth time. “I wanted you to say it. Tell me the truth.”

He can see the words on Wonwoo’s lips, the _it’s not the truth_. But Wonwoo swallows it down, because they both know that that’d be a lie.

“Can I stay?” Chan, banished to the foot of the bed, watches as a freshly-washed Jihoon shoves water bottles into Wonwoo’s hands. His next spike is coming in a few minutes, and Chan knew he wouldn’t be able to handle Wonwoo without chafing.

Jihoon stares at him as if assessing the genuity of the request. “This isn’t a porno, Chan.”

“I _know_ —”

“Well, it looks like you’re trying to get off to watching Wonwoo knot me.”

There’s a mortifying pause as the imagery passes through past Chan’s filter; his body betrays him. Nose wrinkling in disgust, Jihoon says, “Amazing. Alphas are amazing.”

Wonwoo makes a heavy sigh after swallowing down the remnants of his third bottle. He’s so sweaty his hair hangs as if water had been dumped on his head. “I don’t care,” he blinks over at Chan, “but if Jihoonie doesn’t want you to, then.” He doesn’t need to finish the statement.

Chan turns his gaze to Jihoon. Jihoon is watching Wonwoo.

“Seriously?” Jihoon asks. “You’re fine with that?”

“He’s already seen,” Wonwoo says. “Not—not you and I, but, like, he’s—”

“I can tell.” Jihoon rolls head around, stretching the muscles out in his neck, and sighs. Contemplates. Chan is a few seconds off from telling him that it’s totally fine if it makes him uncomfortable before Jihoon assesses him from head to toe and says, “ _Just_ watching. Stay there.”

“Just watching,” Chan affirms. He sits on the floor and gets comfortable against the wall, his view of the top of the bed still good enough to see whatever happens.

It’s miraculous, actually, that he doesn’t touch himself once. Wonwoo maneuvers Jihoon around the bed for the next hour, fucking him hard until his knot inflates and he can’t do much more than rock into Jihoon’s heat and mouth at his slack lips. Jihoon’s usual low and raspy timbre crawls up several octaves every time, his expression going unguarded once Wonwoo spills into him, keeps it there in a false act of procreation.

Reality cannot touch Chan’s quietest thoughts. Wonwoo’s body, tan and glittering beneath the fluorescence of his computer screen, draped over where Jihoon kneels. _Presents_. Their hands intertwining until it’s as if Jihoon doesn’t have hands at all, as big as Wonwoo’s are. Their noises meshed together, high and low and everywhere in-between. It’s miraculous that Chan manages to ignore his erection until Wonwoo knots Jihoon for the second time, and Chan stumbles to his feet and towards the door, mumbling nonsense that neither of them can hear over their shared breaths.

Soonyoung takes over for Jihoon the next day. Chan and Hansol take trips to the convenience store to buy snacks before their shifts, and Jihoon goes in to scent Wonwoo on Soonyoung’s downtimes. The days pass in a murky blur, the week slipping through Chan’s fingers. All too soon, Wonwoo’s rut has tapered off, and he’s left scrambling to make up for lost time on the manuscript.

“I never wanna have sex again for the rest of the year,” Soonyoung says on his way to the kitchen, bag of empty water bottles and trash in his hand.

“See you in three months,” Jihoon shouts through his bedroom door.

Chan tucks the lunchbox Mingyu made for him under his arm goes to the foyer, slipping on his shoes. “Work,” he mumble-shouts and pushes the front door open.

_Dr. Min Youngsik explains the intersection of sexual desire and subgender attraction as elusive. “If we still don’t understand what it means to be an alpha in our modern society, we are centuries from discovering what it means to be a man. What does an alpha man provide that an omega man does not? Where do we place the alpha woman in an environment where she finds benefits from her subgender but is discounted due to her gender? This does not touch on the interactions of race, gender, and subgender._

_“What we think of an alpha woman that carries sexual attraction to an omega woman is much different from how we interpret an alpha man that finds himself sexually attracted to another alpha man. This is a phenomen that dates back to pre-modern times. The social ramifications of diverse sexual attraction did not exist then like it does now._

_We are at an intersection of time. In one-hundred more years the ‘subgender’ may cease to exist. Would that heighten or destroy the social standings we see today? That is a topic of much controversy.”_

Wonwoo bites him. A proper, final mating bite, two days after his rut eases entirely and Chan wants to play.

“I’m serious,” Wonwoo tries, hands on Chan’s waist as Chan straddles him in his office chair and blocks the computer from view, “I have to finish this; I wasted too much time.”

“You know what do to if you want me to stop,” Chan all but sing-songs. Wonwoo is turned on. If he weren’t, Chan would’ve left, but he is, because he likes this. How he can still be horny after a week of fucking everyone that offered themselves up to him, Chan doesn’t know.

How _Chan_ is still horny after offering himself up to Wonwoo several times, he doesn’t know.

But Wonwoo’s distress and arousal and annoyance turns him on. Wonwoo says, “I’m gonna call your bluff if you don’t quit it. I really am,” and Chan scrunches his face up in laughter.

That’s apparently all it takes for Wonwoo’s months and months of patience to wilt; he lifts Chan up as he stands and unceremoniously dumps him onto the (now clean and well-made) bed. Everything blurring into various, dark colors, Chan doesn’t have time to reorient before Wonwoo shoves him onto his belly, grabs his hips, and _tugs_ him up onto his knees. Wonwoo kneels on the bed beside him, palm coming to hold the back of Chan’s head down.

Chan whimpers. His cock takes interest, filling gradually.

“Enough,” Wonwoo says. It’s final in a way Chan’s never heard from him before.

And when his teeth break the skin right over Chan’s scent gland, the room takes a different shape. He bucks, involuntary, cries out, pain melting to pleasure melting to pain again. He wonders, ditantly, how different it is for an omega. If instead of fuzz and sprinklers, there’s a lightshow. Their instincts telling them _this is it. This is what you’ve always wanted, even if you thought you didn’t._

They don’t have sex. Wonwoo’s cock is out of service despite what his pheremones say, and Chan is exhausted from work. Instead, Wonwoo laps up the blood he’s left behind while Chan sighs, and he climbs into the bed to lie beside him.

Chan doesn’t ask about his deadline. He asks, “What happens now? Are we mated?”

Wonwoo shrugs at the ceiling. “I guess so.”

“Is it meant to feel different?” All he feels is the throbbing in his neck, skin broken and tender.

“How am I supposed to know?”

Chan flings a lazy arm in the direction of Wonwoo’s bookshelf. “How do you _not_ know?”

“Reading sociology books isn’t the same as lived experiences. I’ve—I don’t think anything changes. Between alphas. Aside from you not bothering me anymore.”

A mark of submission that his body understands. Chan adjusts his groin where it sits between the mattress and his pelvis.

“Would things change if you mated with Jihoonie hyung?”

“Biologically,” Wonwoo says.

“Then,” Chan starts. Stops. “Is this a real mating?”

Wonwoo looks at him. His pupils take on an inhuman glow in the darkness—almost burgundy. Chan’s met a lot of alphas growing up, but Wonwoo’s are the only eyes that do that. There are wolves out in the wild that do that, too.

Wonwoo’s got hair everywhere. So much hair.

“Do you want it to be?” he asks.

Chan hadn’t thought of that. It doesn’t compel him one way or the other, being a mate—but the realization that others would see it and know. That Chan would see it and know. Wonwoo managed to tame him.

Wonwoo made Chan submit. That.

“Yeah,” Chan says. He presses tentative fingers to the wound. Fuck, it burns so good. “So—does it? Do you think?”

Wonwoo’s eyes are still glowing that inhuman burgudeny. He reaches out to touch Chan’s fingers.

“I think whatever you’re feeling is real,” he tells him. “Does the reason really matter?”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading. all comments/kudos mean the most to me. 
> 
> [my CC if you have questions or concerns--or just wanna chat!](https://curiouscat.me/disiIIusioned)


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